Best recipes aren’t on paper

PublishedJuly 17, 2013

–Betty Street–

Charlotte Lewis enjoys cooking and she loves cooking for a crowd. However, she has to wait until one or both of her sons and their families come home for a visit before she can prepare those old favorites. Son Brad generally requests chicken and dumplings (frozen bread dough for the dumplings).
She uses a bit of this and a bit of that in most of her recipes, and like many good cooks, many of Charlotte’s recipes aren’t written down.
Charlotte was born and raised on a farm near the small town of Wolford in northern North Dakota. Her dad farmed and did home construction while her mother “was the chief dishwasher and cook and milked cows.”
Charlotte’s maternal grandmother had an Amish background, so all the girls learned quilting, cooking and canning. “And when Grandma visited, it was all work and no play!” she said.
The family’s ever-present thought was: waste not, want not; they even drank rhubarb juice and thought nothing of it … because it was there.
How Charlotte and Ken came to be in Mobridge is quite a story. Ken used to visit Mobridge in the summers with friends from Ellendale, N.D., to go fishing; and he often said if he had a job here in Mobridge that he’d move here.
One summer day after he returned to Ellendale, Ken told Charlotte that he’d interviewed for a job (mechanic at Larry Jensen Motors) and was hired on the spot. He said he was moving and did she want to come along?
Charlotte elected to wait until she had a job in Mobridge before packing up. She then worked nine years as receptionist and clinic manager at Oahe Veterinary Hospital; now she’s the insurance billing clerk at Mobridge Regional Hospital.
Charlotte’s worst cooking disaster was when she forgot she turned the burner on under the pan of oil for the first step in making caramel corn, and went instead to fold some clothes fresh from the dryer. The blast of the smoke alarm and huge clouds of black smoke alerted her to the oil fire in the kitchen.
Charlotte did not, as was her first thought, grab the water sprayer at the sink to put out the fire on the stove. Instead, she snatched the pan’s lid and slammed it onto the pot, then rushed everything outside onto the patio.
Harley Overseth was showing the house next door to Charlotte’s, saw the smoke and rushed up to ask her if he should call the fire department. She assured him everything was under control at that point and thanked him for his concern. And now whenever Harley sees Charlotte, he grins and she ducks her head.
The smoke damage was limited to what could be scrubbed off walls and Charlotte never leaves the start of caramel corn for any reason at all. Never.